I think I want to stay away from the Schiavo case and its ramifications today. It's Easter, not a holiday I celebrate, but there's also a certain Pagan aspect to the day (That's why eggs, calla lillies and bunnies are associated with the feast of the Risen Death God) that is appealing to me. It's all about getting out into nature and enjoying the fact that the Northern Hemisphere is "waking up" after a long winter's nap.

We got tons and tons of rain this year, and the upshot is that we now have tons and tons of wild flowers blooming everywhere, even in vacant lots, waste places, and Death Valley. The desert is now gilded with vast fields of yellow flowers with the occasional hit of purple.

The strawberries seem to be in very good shape this year...there was question about whether they'd be drowned out by too much rain but the drenchings seem to have yielded a good result. I'm hoping that asparagus will come into season too...that's one of my favorite veggies and another part of the Spring Experience for me.

I am hoping to get a little hiking in today if all goes well. No, I didn't accomplish what I was hoping to accomplish this Spring Break, but I think I accomplished what I needed to do which was relax and restore myself. If you have been reading this blog regularly you know that I was suffering a bit of burnout these past few weeks...so much so that I was questioning whether or not I needed to completely rethink my plans for the future. I needed to simply take a break. I get one more day off on Cesar Chavez Day, which falls on the 31st which is Thursday. It pre-empts something I enjoy, which is lab time for Biology 3. But it means that next weekend is a long one for me, which is appreciated.

Tomorrow I find out if Dr. Roth liked my paper ("None Dare Call It Fascism: The George W. Bush Administration, 2001-present.") or not. I wasn't able to bring out all the points I wanted to in the paper, which could not be more than 7 double-spaced pages long. I want to go back to it and expand it, then offer it for download or online viewing. It seems like OpenOffice.Org-made PDFs are easily viewed under Windows and MacOS X, so I'm going to start using OO.o more to make PDFs. I also want to see what I can do about getting my scanner to work with this Linux system. Supposedly the Epson scanners are very well supported under Linux. I know for a fact that they are very well supported under MacOS X...if my family will buy me that Mac mini as a grad gift (that's assuming I do graduate) the Epson scanner is extremely well supported there, and you get monitor/color space calibration right there in the OS.

I think today I will just concentrate on enjoying Spring today. Tomorrow it's back to the grind. Today is for fun.